


From the Winter, Spring

by lilacsigil



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulan and Aurora both put duty first. Then the world changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Winter, Spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



> Content warning: animals being hunted for food, not graphic.

All Hua Mulan had wanted, like any soldier, was to do her duty and go home. She trained hard, fought bravely, refused all rank and honour, and turned for home. Then the world collapsed. Home, like almost everything else, was gone. Her father was gone.

Mulan was good at big decisions, and at making them quickly. She gathered her comrades around her, Phillip and Yao and Ling, and fought their way through the hosts of monsters and bandits. They protected refugees and farmers and storm-tossed sailors until they found sanctuary on a small island with other warriors and those they protected. She felt not a moment of fear as they fought; not a moment of doubt about her decision to stay and fight rather than try to find a way home; until the moment that she was safe. Then she entered her tent, carefully removed and cleaned her weapons, shed her armour and her sturdy boots, and put them tidily aside, as her army training had taught her. She lay on the dirt floor in nothing but her cotton underclothes and wept.

When she walked out of her tent again, she was entirely calm. She went to find Phillip, wherever he might have got to in the rough camp. He was tending to the horses, giving his appreciative steed Samson the kind of thorough grooming that they had rarely managed in their long trek to safety. Mulan glanced over the motley collection of brushes and took one for her own horse, Khan.

"It's good to take some time to rest," Phillip said, his princely demeanour rather marred by his casual garb, which was covered with scraps of the grass he'd cut for the horses.

"You had a quest. We had a quest." Mulan brushed Khan at a furious pace.

Phillip paused at a tangle in Samson's mane. "You don't think I've forgotten Aurora, do you?"

Mulan heard the laughter in his voice and brushed even more firmly. She couldn't think about things like jokes and friends and home. All that was left for her was duty, and now she had none. "As soon as everyone is settled here we have to head out again."

"Mulan."

It was a command, and she couldn't help but look at him. Too long in the army.

"The horses need rest, even if we don't. Five days, maybe a week, and we'll be on our way to Aurora again."

"Your quest is mine." She let out her breath in sheer relief and carried on her grooming at a pace that Khan was more likely to appreciate.

***

Phillip was dead. Mulan had nothing. She was so angry at Phillip that she could barely breathe, but Aurora was here, her voice nagging at Mulan's consciousness, on and on.

"Shut up!" Mulan yelled at her. "Shut up!"

Aurora did, her face as imperious as ever, with nothing of the softness Mulan saw when she looked at Phillip. She waited for a moment, but Mulan couldn't think of what to do next, so Aurora spoke. "Phillip said that we should keep each other safe, yes?"

Mulan nodded, seething. Phillip was dead, less than a day after succeeding in his quest. The words burst out of her without her bidding. "He searched for you for so long, and now he's dead!"

"I can't bring him back! I would, I would, but I can't!" Aurora shouted back, then fell silent as she heard a crashing of branches in the distance.

Mulan grabbed Aurora's arm, suddenly energised again. "Ogres," she whispered. "We have to take Samson and get out of here. Quietly."

They swung up onto the big brown horse, Mulan in front, and she sent a silent blessing to Khan, wishing him the good fortune to find his way safely home. There was no time to go looking for him now, but he was a smart horse, and fast. She kept Samson at a walk to minimise the chances of the ogres hearing them, even though the prickling at the back of her neck urged her to run, run, run.

"Why can't we go faster?" Aurora whispered in Mulan's ear, her arms firmly around Mulan's waist.

"No, of course, you don't know. There weren't many ogres around when you were enchanted to sleep and now they're everywhere. Ogres hunt by sound, so loud noises attract them. It's my fault – I knew better than to yell in a forest at night. I'm sorry."

Aurora took a breath, and Mulan could feel it against her jaw, a quiet intake of air. "Phillip said we should take care each other, but I'm afraid I don't know a great deal about how things in this world. So I ask on my own behalf: please look after me until I am able to look after you, too."

Mulan sat up straighter. This was something she could do. Her duty. "Yes, I promise."

***

Morning took them to a less tangled area of the forest. There were some signs of people having been there in the last few weeks – the cold remains of a fire, marks where large branches had been collected and dragged – but no signs of violence, so Mulan had to chance that this was a relatively safe area.

"We should rest here," she told Aurora, and the princess slid gratefully off the horse. Mulan wasn't quite sure how she managed to ride astride in those long skirts, but they seemed voluminous enough for her to manage. Even so, she looked stiff and sore, and Mulan herself was tired. She loosened Samson's girth and took off his bridle to let him graze, tethering him in the clearing.

Aurora gathered her shawl around her. "You should sleep. I've been asleep for a long time and I don't need any more."

Mulan eyed her suspiciously. "You look tired."

"I'm stiff from riding, not sleepy. I may not have much experience in the world I've woken into, but I think I can warn you if I hear an ogre coming. Is there anything else of which I should be aware?"

"There's a lot of trolls, but they don't wander about like ogres, so I doubt we'll see one. Otherwise, just the usual – wolves, bandits…"

"I wasn't raised as a princess: I grew up in a forest just like this one, Mulan. I won't have any trouble watching for regular dangers, as long as there's no other surprises." She started to walk the edge of the clearing, shaking out her stiff muscles, and checking the surrounds.

Mulan yawned. "Well, I grew up in a city and then lived in a series of army camps, so you're probably as capable of keeping watch as I am, at least here." Aurora's quiet confidence was surprisingly reassuring, and Mulan stripped off her sword belt and the more elaborate parts of her armour, cushioned her head on her arm, and, with the ease of long practice, fell immediately into a deep sleep.

When Mulan awoke, the sun was high in the sky and a delicious smell filled her nostrils. Aurora had made a fire and was grilling a pair of pigeon-sized birds on a complicated arrangement of woven green twigs.

"Good morning! I hope I didn't wake you." Aurora offered Mulan a drink from the collapsible leather bucket that Phillip kept in his saddlebag. "I found some raspberries, mushrooms and hazelnuts as well, though as I remember it, they shouldn't both be out in the same season." She had Phillip's knife, too, and was cleaning it neatly with leaves.

"The seasons are very odd, now." Mulan cleared her throat and sat up, accepting the bucket and drinking deeply. "Back at the settlement we mostly rely on meat, since no-one can predict what is going to be ready for harvest when, or even if anything will make it to harvest. All that seems to be surviving are wild plants and pumpkins."

"Pumpkins?"

"Yes! No-one knows why, but we're all sick of them. Someone was trying to make pumpkin cider, but I have no idea how that's going to turn out."

Aurora laughed. "I suppose it was the ogres that stopped everyone just moving into the forest, then. It's easy enough to find food here."

"For you it is. I would have managed water and probably a bird or rabbit, but I'm not likely to work out what's safe to eat otherwise. The plants here are very different from my homeland. And most of the people who made it to the settlement are from the towns or the various armies. We have four blacksmiths and no herbalists! Maybe you can teach us to use the forest better?"

"I'd love to!" Aurora poked one of the grilling birds with a stick.

"Did you bring those birds down with a knife?" Mulan asked, somewhat incredulously. Aurora didn't seem the type to practice knife-throwing, and Phillip's knife was not balanced correctly for that in any case.

"Oh, no, I made a snare." Aurora held up her shawl, pointing to where she had pulled out several long threads. "Silk worked perfectly – I wish I'd had some when I lived with my godmothers!" She placed two woven grass mats on a small log. "I'll put the meat on these, so we won't burn our fingers holding the birds."

"I usually eat with my fingers. We can use my leather gloves."

Aurora laughed and handed Mulan a pair of slightly crooked whittled chopsticks. "I made these – that's what your people use to eat, right? My godmothers used to have fairies from your kingdom visiting, and they taught me to use chopsticks. I found them better than a knife or fork for eating meat cooked like this."

Mulan blinked in surprise. Her own pair of chopsticks – one of the few familiar things she'd been able to take from home that wouldn't immediately identify her as a girl – was in Khan's saddlebag, and he was hopefully halfway back to the settlement by now. She hadn't expected anyone else to use chopsticks, but here was Aurora with a second pair to neatly remove the birds from their grill and place each one on a grass mat. She added a few sliced mushrooms and a handful of berries and roasted hazelnuts and it was a dish fit for a princess.

"Enjoy!" Aurora gestured for her to come to eat.

Mulan obeyed, hoeing into her food with the gusto of a soldier, her chopsticks ripping chunks of delicious meat from the bird. Aurora was much daintier, alternating small bites of meat with berries or nuts, but she didn't seem in the least bit bothered by Mulan's swift demolition of the meal.

By the time Mulan was finished, Aurora was only half done, though she was certainly enjoying each bite. Mulan turned to Aurora, backed up a little so she didn't end up with her face in Aurora's meal, and bowed to her. "Thank you for this excellent meal. I am in your debt."

Aurora finished her mouthful, shaking her head. "Not at all. Phillip said we should keep each other safe – he wasn't just talking to you. I may not be a warrior, but I can help you. If your settlement has no woodsmen, maybe that's what I'm supposed to do."

Maybe Aurora was more used to being without Phillip, but it made Mulan angry to hear his name when he would never answer to it again. "You wanted nothing to do with me yesterday."

"I…was scared. Angry and scared that someone else had all that time with Phillip and I had none. I jumped to the wrong conclusion and I'm sorry." There was a disappointed tightness to Aurora's mouth that made Mulan uncomfortable.

"You said that I was in love with him, but you were wrong. His quest gave me purpose, and that's what I cannot live without. I'm only glad he gave me another duty before he died."

"So you did love him, in a way."

"Yes! Yes, I did, and you are no replacement!" Mulan at least managed not to shout.

To Mulan's shock, Aurora burst into tears. "You're right, I'm not. What I am supposed to do without him? Everyone I knew is gone!" She hid her face in her hands trying to stifle her sobs, but they were terrible, deep convulsions of grief, not the tears of a petulant child, and they could not be silenced.

Mulan stood aside for a moment, unused to this outpouring of feelings, but Aurora's sobs tore memory loose inside Mulan. She felt again that moment when she realised that her home was gone, and dropped to the ground beside Aurora. She threw her arm around Aurora's shoulders, feeling oddly clumsy, and whispered to her.

"Shh. They will always be with you. Your parents and Phillip and your godmothers, all their lives are part of you now. Phillip told me the same thing when our world was torn away: that I had a duty to them to make the world better in the way they would have wanted. My father wanted only peace. Phillip wanted you to be freed from your curse. From what he told me, your parents and godmothers wanted only to keep you safe. Now all of that is in you."

"It's too much!" Aurora cried. "All my life I have been trained to duty, but I didn't realise I would be alone!" She grabbed Mulan's hand and looked her square in the face, though her eyes were still full of tears. "We don't have to be alone. We can share these duties. Keep each other safe."

"Everything that Phillip told me about you, I admired. I thought that to free you would be to add good to an evil world. And I was right."

Aurora pulled Mulan's face down to hers and kissed her. It was a messy kiss, Aurora too teary to breathe and Mulan caught unaware, but passion and desperation made up for it, and when Mulan pulled away her face was wet with Aurora's tears.

"Together, then," Mulan told Aurora, and pulled her to her feet to kiss again for a great deal longer, twining her fingers in Aurora's wavy hair as Aurora slid her fingertips under Mulan's leather armour at the small of her back.

Mulan leaned on Aurora a little, though she tried never to lean on anyone, and Aurora supported her, her tears drying on her cheeks. Mulan couldn't remember the last time someone had touched her with anything more than a comradely slap on the back, and she couldn't let go of Aurora, now, her warm skin and sweet lips so very much more real than the cold comforts of the dead.

"Yet, I owe them duty," she said out loud, a finger tracing the downy hair at Aurora's hairline.

"And love," Aurora replied, swallowing down one last sob. "We owe them love."

Mulan could not answer, her throat thick with grief, so she kissed Aurora instead, sure that she would understand, remembering now that from the bitterness is born something sweet; from the winter, spring.


End file.
